Winner of the February 2020 Elsevier Atlas Award, this article proposes a circular economy framework for the adaptive reuse of cultural heritage buildings to reduce environmental impacts, contributing to SDGs 11, 12 and 13.

To achieve SDG 7 (Affordable and clean energy) and SDG 13 (climate action) we need reliable and robust renewable energy sources. Solar photovoltaics (PV) is a very promising and rapidly growing technology (particularly in the developing world), but one of the problems of solar panels is that they “soil” – ie over time they become damaged by dust / pollution / animal waste / moss etc, and this limits their performance. This Joule study is the most accurate analysis of the impact of soiling, and sets out a pathway to how soiling can be mitigated.